My start as a long-distance runner
Although I've been running for as long as I can remember, I only really started to take an interest in long-distance running events when I left France for the first time. That was in 2004, when I was 21. I was going to study in Austria, the country that would a few years later become my home and that of my daughters. At the time I was finding it very hard to adapt to this foreign country, its language and customs. I tried as hard as I could to maintain the link with France, to reduce the geographical and cultural distance. It was as if a little voice was already whispering in my ear that this distance was going to be an integral part of my life and that I had to abolish it at all costs to stay alive.
My relationship with running today
Today, for various reasons, I literally commute between these two countries. And even today, I run long distances. It's the way I've found to stay connected with these two worlds I'm just passing through. By connecting with the landscapes, the smells and the colours, I create a very intimate relationship with these elements. And here again, the mediation of mindfulness while running allows me to solidify the bridge between these two worlds.
Running : Physical meditations
It was through my interest in philosophical approaches to running that I realised 17 years later that there is indeed a link between "approaching distance" in the literal sense of the term, the very essence of the long-distance runner, and "distance". Guillaume Le Blanc in "Courir - Méditations physiques" (Running - Physical Meditations) says: "to make the distant become closer is to want to abolish the distant". The runner covers a distance to abolish it. The paradox lies in the fact that once the distance has been covered, it is reborn in another form. The geographical distance becomes a temporal distance. When I finish my 20 km, the experience disappears into a future time: the 20 km have been run. The runner leaves no trace on the tarmac, just as I leave no trace in the sky on my repeated journeys. The race, like my return journeys, only exist for as long as they last. They don't exist in space, but in time. The runner just passes through.
Running as wandering madness
As I write these lines, I am reminded of an anecdote. On our honeymoon, Niki and I went hiking at the foot of the Python de la Fournaise volcano on Reunion Island. We had an argument and Niki was walking about ten metres ahead of me. It was late in the day. As is often the case at this time of day, the fog had lifted. Niki had stopped to wait for me on the side of the road. I carried on walking, not even realising that I was overtaking him and leaving him behind. After ten minutes or so, in a panic, I started running straight ahead to close the distance between myself and Niki. Only a physical obstacle, the end of the road, stopped me in my wandering madness and made me turn back. It was as if reason had abandoned me. I was a bit like an automaton-marathoner trying to reach a hypothetical finish line. Feeling in danger, trapped in the race, I had no choice but to run. Here again I was covering a distance that allowed me to reduce the distance between Niki and myself. It was a paradoxical reaction, bordering on madness, because by abolishing one distance I was creating another of a different kind.
Why am I running?
I'm running after something I can't reach. I'm running across an imaginary bridge between France and Austria, between the people I love on either side of it. And that's exactly what makes me want to go back. It's a paradoxical desire, because even if I find pleasure in building this imaginary bridge, there's pain too. The pleasure of finding one side of the bridge and the pain of leaving the other. I think that the repeated act of running allows me to maintain this continuous link between the two worlds. But if I really knew what I was running after, maybe then I'd stop running.
Hello runner,
I really liked the parallel you drew between running and life itself, how each kilometer covered abolishes one distance, but creates another. It's so true, in life, we often move from one challenge to another, and each step we take makes us realize there's still more to go. In your story the race becomes a metaphor for our deep desire to get closer to the people who matter to us, even when circumstances seem to pull us away.
Congratulations on your article!
Hello Marina,
Interesting reflexions on running. It seems that we often associate running with some kinf of fleeing mouvment, as if running implied leaving behind something thats scares us or makes us want to move, to change horizons in a way. But running is also a way of bulding, running machines for example are objects accomplishing they role, in some way they aren't fleeing, on the contrary they are realising they objective. I think you talk about running in both senses, in someway running makes you lievly, as being able to produce motion, reduce distance, but running also questions you about why you run. Is it a matter of distance ? or rather a search for movement, some kinf …